Adventures on Ebay

I have found over the past several years that one can sell just about anything on eBay. It’s not a matter of having something someone else wants, though that helps. It’s all about salesmanship, creating demand for your listing to anyone who manages to come across it.

Early on in my eBay experience I was dismayed to find useful items of reasonable (or better) quality that I had listed on eBay end up with no bids after seven days at auction. It’s frustrating and dismaying, particularly in instances where the item was something I myself might have purchased. But I learned that how I listed the items owed much to the measure of my success.

I soon learned that any manner of junk or bric-a-brac could be sold on eBay if I was careful in how I listed the item. This realization dawned on me several years ago after cleaning out the garage and ending up with a box of items destined for Goodwill or eBay. I had organized several plastic bins of cords: power supply cords, telephone cords, RCA cables and all manner of SCSI, mini-DIN and USB computer and printer cables. At last there remained a tangled pile of various cords and cables that I could not assign a function to. They had perhaps come packaged with electronics and remained unneeded or unused or were for cell phones or PALM pilots I no longer owned.

As I was listing a number of items on eBay (children’s clothes, CD’s and books, and unused house wares), I began to giggle thinking about the tangle of mystery cables in my garage, and, if only to amuse myself, listed them as “My Grab-Bag Pile of Mystery Cables,” imploring someone to take them off my hands but warning prospective bidders, “You don’t know what you may get in my Grab-Bag Pile of Mystery Cables.”

I sold the tangle of mystery cables and received positive feedback.

A week ago I went through a similar exercise in the garage, a seven-year-long process of reducing the amount of junk so that I can actually use the two-car garage for two cars instead of one. (I should admit at this point that it was my wife who, after cleaning the garage while I was on a business trip three or four years ago, managed to squeeze both cars into the garage, a situation which lasted perhaps a week until we started a remodel project. We’ve not achieved two-car status since then). Among the miscellany in the discard box was a small toy that should have been merely thrown out: three-inch high ghost that would waddle a foot or two across the floor when wound up. Most likely it was something that came home in my child’s Trick-or-Treat bucket many years before, and it was now among the miscellany preventing my wife’s Jeep from spending its nights out of the weather.

Instead of throwing it out, I put it up on eBay.

I received three bids and I ship it out tomorrow.

A Cast Reunion

Recently there was a cast reunion worth mentioning.

No, I am not writing about the Seinfeld reunion that is the subject of this season's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on HBO.

Think more David O. Selzenick and less Larry David.

To honor the 70th anniversary of Gone With the Wind, surviving cast members gathered at a tribute event outside Atlanta recently. With Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh being off-planet, the cast reunion comprised actors who played children and babies and Beau Wilkes at various childhood ages in the classic 1939 film.

I don't suppose there was much reminiscing going on at this reunion. But for those surviving performers in attendance , it must be marvelous to know that each was a part of such a remarkable feat of cinematic grandeur the likes of which are long gone in American motion pictures.

I think I'll add Gone With the Wind to my Netflix queue. It's been a while for me, too.

Oh, and George is divorced and is trying to get back with this ex-wife, in case you were wondering.

Good Morning, Captain

What's going on with Captain Crunch these days? Am I the only one who has noticed his transformation? Did he get a makeover? He looks more airbrushed, less...saltier.

There was a time when the good captain was truly a man of the sea, rugged and tough, a seadog who knew the stars and could navigate a sloop safely around the Cape of Good Hope with his eyes closed. And he could sniff out a ripe berry on a crunchberry vine from fifty paces and served up a cereal so crispy in milk that he was the envy of every galley on the seven seas. The look in his lined eyes bespoke a dignity becoming a seasoned seaman, and his smile was a knowing one, distinct and mature, suggesting a nobility that few of his peers (Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, the Trix Rabbit, Fred and Barney, to name a few) would ever come close to achieving.

Now he looks like an idiot. His eyebrows are on his hat. He sports a grin that suggests frenzied derangement and an ineptitude and incompetence so pervasive that I hesitate even opening the box. And what's with that salute? The old Captain Crunch would never stoop so low to hawk cereal using a proper naval salute. Sure, he'd salute in the presence of an admiral, or to return a salute from one of his trusted crew. But to him, a salute was a vital part of seafaring decorum that seems now lost upon him.

I understand he's been a Commodore since 2004. Whoever at Quaker is in charge of his publicity is doing a terrible job.

There really are only two conclusions one can draw from this most absurd transformation: either the Captain we all know and love is dead, and Quaker has replaced him with a poor imitation of the great man, or the Captain has gone truly insane.

I must contact the folks at Quaker, and eagerly await a reply.

Top: The Captain after his transformation; Botton: The good Captain as we remember him.

Halloween

I'm not much for Halloween, not since I tried going to George's Halloween party in 1985 as a pumpkin head. That's a nasty costume, wearing a hollowed out pumpkin on your head. I had to regroup at the last moment and go as Caesar: a sheet, some ivy in the hair, good to go.

This year we had some fun trying on masks at the store, and attended a production of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in the outdoor theater down by the river. It was enjoyable. My daughter was pleased to meet the horseman after the show. When I did my imitation of the horseman, she corrected me and reminded me that without a head, he had no mouth and therefore could not speak. I stood corrected.

The true fright this Halloween was the Tennessee game. What a horror that was.

Now, on to Thanksgiving!

Visiting Paradise

I recently returned from a trip to Guatemala which has provided me with a deeper perspective on my life and on the culture in which we live here in the United States.

Our hosts at Iglasia Shalom were wonderful people, and it was a pleasure to get to know a number of people during my visit to Guatemala City and Antigua.

In visiting a few families in the steep and hilly slum area of Guatemala City called Paradise (pictured), I was humbled to realize how blessed a person I am, and how much I have. Most of these families live a life with little hope for anything, and merely subsist in tiny concrete block and corrugated tin dwellings stacked precariously on top of one another.

Meeting many of the children was a joy. Despite living in poverty they are still children, and a smile, or a hug, goes a long way. I spent some time with my new friend, Christopher, who never knew his father and at some point lost his mother (I am not clear on the details). Although he spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish, we had a great time playing together, and sharing a meal together. We had a particularly terrific time making sculptures out of candy, each of us trying to outdo the other. Already I miss Christopher, and look forward to seeing him again someday.

On Monday we spent the day providing new shoes and socks for more than four hundred of these children. I spent the entire day washing filthy, sometimes sore-ridden feet. This, too, was a humbling experience, but the smiles on some of these kids provided me with priceless moments of joy, particularly when washing the feet of the ticklish ones.

Visiting Antigua was one of the highlights of the trip. An old Spanish town in a valley surrounded by smoldering volcanoes and high mountains on which coffee and avocados are grown, Antigua has been destroyed a number of times but still manages to thrive.

Did I mention the coffee? Mmmmm.... good coffee.

The Annotated Beach Photo

In order to provide you with the most for your entertainment dollar, I include below an annotataed version of the beach photo I posted in my little-viewed post, "Indian Summer." In the annotated version of the photo, I reference a broken toe. I must, however, reliquish the Golden Digit Award for blogs about toes to my friend George, who, because of my last-minute trip to the coast, I failed to entertain. See more on George's toe here and here.

Indian Summer

After a series of challenges in nailing down dates for an extended family trip to the coast this summer, we managed to schedule and then re-schedule a family weekend to the beach in October! After a few missteps we managed to get things together at the last moment as the trip meant much to our daughter, and we'd had to bag it back during Labor Day Weekend due to logistical concerns.

For me, the weekend was nice, relaxing, mindless. We enjoyed some good food, courtesy of Papa Jim (always game for a nice seafood dinner, where as Mom elected, as is her custom at fine seafood restaurants across this great nation, to order the chicken sandwich) and time for just...well, doing nothing. Which we all need, now and again.

I spent some extended time on the beach, during which I carefully applied SPF 30 to all exposed parts of my body except the bridge of my nose, a splotch on my forehead and a place on my cheek, all of which are rather red. There are two lines down my forearms which did not receive the sunscreen, and those places are bright red as well, given I spent a couple of hours holding my book up in order to block out the sun.

Saturday was 90 degrees, very warm and muggy, and frolicking in the surf was the order of the day. I managed to read the 1920 novel "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," by Agatha Christie, her first novel and the first appearance of her famed detective Hercule Poirot. (Incidentally, the final Poirot novel, "Curtain," is also set at Styles, an English estate, and narrated by the same character, Hastings. "Curtain" was published in 1975 but, interestingly enough, written during the 1930's).

Chores

I don't know why she complains about taking out the garbage. It's a very easy job. I can think of few tasks which are simpler - bag the garbage, take it to the curb, bag the garbage and take it to the curb.

I guess some kids are lightweights and not cut out for work.

Although, in her defense, we do seem to produce a lot of trash.